In the conventional art, all game servers providing game service are connected to each other in a mesh topology. FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating network connections between game servers according to the conventional art.
According to the conventional art illustrated in FIG. 1, every time new game servers are added, there is a surprising increase in a number of connections from the viewpoint of the entire network. FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating network connections between game servers which may occur as a number of game servers continuously increases in the conventional art.
According to the conventional art in which game servers are connected to each other with mesh topology, as described above, when a number of game servers increases, the connection structure thereof also becomes very complicated. As a result, a game server may not be able to be extended according to an increase of game users. Also, when a connection between game servers is globally extended, the management thereof also becomes difficult.
The more a number of partner servers connect to one server, the more the total number of connections geometrically increases. Generally, in the conventional art, one game server is connected to a login server, a ranking server, and a database server. In this instance, the game server is additionally grouped with a channel list server and a notice server as one multicast group. Accordingly, a substantial number of connections in the entire network greatly exceeds a number of connections between game servers. Also, its management is very difficult.
Also, in the case of an online game, a plurality of service instances interacts and communications between the service instances also increase. However, in the conventional art, a network address is not allocated to each service instance. Namely, one process having an identical network address contains a plurality of service instances and also has a burden for processing a large number of communications between a plurality of service instances.
Accordingly, a new communication network structure which can deviate from a conventional network structure connecting all game servers in a mesh topology and simplify connections between servers is needed. Also, a new type of address system which allocates a network address to each service in the communication network structure is needed. Also, a method capable of effectively processing transmitting/receiving anycast data and multicast data between each service in the new communication structure is needed.